


Shadowboxing

by lakemonsters



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Melancholy, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 15:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakemonsters/pseuds/lakemonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginko's been dreaming about a past that seems so real but he doesn't quite remember. He's made it this far with only the present guiding him, then again, is there someone watching over him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadowboxing

Ginko does not know that he's been here before and so he takes his time exploring the place - the beautiful pond and humble bungalow. The traces of those who once lived there remain and he touches the surface of what he can reach and those he cannot, he leaves alone. He reckons that it must have been a quiet and meager life as if the place did not allow excess. It felt like those who lived there either left the place or waited there to die. 

That's the kind of energy it gave off. 

It's not the kind of energy that Ginko felt comfortable with and if it weren't for an urgent request for him to check this place out, he really wouldn't bother coming. He knows that the mushi living in the pond takes the form of darkness. The witnesses said that there is indeed a glob of darkness emerging from the thicket to feed on the fish or anyone in the pond at a certain time of day.

It's the first time he's heard of this type of mushi – but a deep curiosity and an ache in his left 'eye' tells him that it could also be something important. That it could be somehow connected to the past he can't ever remember. Ginko places his palm lightly over his damaged 'eye' and takes a moment before he starts moving again. 

He has always known that there was something alive in him, something not of him but a part of him. It was a foreign entity that lived with him, saw things with him and felt everything around him. It strikes him as strange because this eye has never acted the way it was acting right now. It has bled and throbbed but not so urgent as to worry him - as if the darkness residing in that place where his eye should be is trying to leap out of him and liberate them both from their strange circle, within a circle.

No one has named this glob of darkness either – which was impossible since the townfolk would at least have coloquial they can use to refer to it. So it makes Ginko think that an effect of seeing the mushi could be bits and parts of memory lost. The farther he digs into it, the bigger the mystery gets with no sign of a solution. So he takes his ponderings outside and ventures closer to the pond. 

_What stories do you want to tell me?_

Ginko asks quietly before he spies an albino Kohaku with one of its eyes missing. The fish oddly reminded him of himself. He closed his eye and in winced as his other 'eye' continued to throb and pulse, the closer he got to the water.

_And YOU what's wrong with /you/? Stop it!_

He felt odd ordering his own body to listen to him and he took a step back from the water – the pain ebbed a little. He took three steps back – the pain ebbed a bit more. He tried this formula over and over and realized that the further he was from that pond and that bungalow the better his 'eye' felt. It dawned on him that whatever it is sharing his body is trying to tell him something. It was not a cause for panic but it was indeed getting dark and Ginko decided to call it a day. This place, no matter how intriguing it is, is a place for people who needed a place to stay – not for people who wanted to see so much more. And Ginko wanted to everywhere, see as much as he can, the whole world if possible.

He walks away and when he reaches the end of the pathway leading to the foot of the mountain; a strange light seeped through the leaves and onto the ground, it made him look back, to see that the pond seemed to come alive with silver light. It was a bright, severe kind of light and it only lasted for a little while. 

The pain in his 'eye' was gone and it made him so very tired. Too tired to even remember why he was there to begin with. But he knew where to go, where his lodgings for the night will be, still remembered who requested him to go check this place out. So he ventures down this small path – a familiar path that was wide enough to hold two people. Ginko remembers traveling with someone but then again it could have just been his shadow. He thinks of the fish, he sees the first lantern of the first house in that first village – before everything fades to black.

*

That night he dreams of the white fish with one eye, the fish that slowly turns into a person that is too androgynous to decipher. He or she has silver hair and one eye. He or she is touching Ginko's 'eye' and tells him to always keep it closed. Ginko tries to reason that there is no eye there, only darkness. He or she smiles and tells him that this darkness is special, at its heart is absolute light. This androgynous entity tells him not to go back there again; that bungalow and pond -- there are places to be left only for mushi as they have been there far longer than any human has. This entity tells Ginko in a voice he knows he's heard before, that lulling tone that touches and calms him like nothing else could. Something he's heard from inside him. 

Ginko feels the hand on his 'eye' and the touch becomes tender, trying to ease the dull pain he suffers from time and again. It feels familiar and strange at the same time. From now on Ginko will always know this touch even if he was burning in cinders. He'd know. 

_"My...How you've grown..."_

The last words Ginko hears before everything burns white.

*

The dream ends – it ends with them facing one another – strange mirror images that seemed incomplete without the other. There is nothing but co-dependence: There is no independence.

*

Ginko wakes up and he is in a quiet room, a familiar room that he remembers his contractor providing for him. This means he made it back to the village at least. The room is dark but the glowing, harmless mushi that live with humans, illuminate the nooks and crannies. He finds odd comfort in this and sighs before reaching up to touch his 'eye'. The skin is warm, like the touch of a hand, a totally different feeling from the rest of his body.

Ginko feels restless, this is how he knows he's been dreaming, but now that he's finally conscious, for the life of him, he cannot remember what he was dreaming of.


End file.
